foreign

Google today asked the U.S. government to lift a legal gag order and let it clear up speculation and erroneous reports about what information it's forced to turn over to the feds.

In an open letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director Robert Mueller asking for "transparency," the Mountain View, Calif.-based company is effectively applying an unusual amount of public pressure to the Obama administration. President Obama has claimed to have "the most transparent administration in history," though critics have argued otherwise.

Google, Apple, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, and other Internet companies … Read more

The National Security Agency is vacuuming up records of millions of phone calls made inside the United States, a top secret court order reveals.

A top secret order that was released this afternoon requires Verizon to hand over to the NSA "on an ongoing daily basis" information about all domestic and overseas calls -- "including local telephone calls."

The FBI obtained the secret order, which was disclosed by The Guardian newspaper, from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which meets behind closed doors and whose proceedings rarely become public. It was signed by FISC Judge Roger … Read more

Imagine a floating city of entrepreneurs; a veritable Googleplex of the sea. That's the vision behind Blueseed, a San Francisco startup.

The company plans to deploy a cruise ship 12 nautical miles from Silicon Valley -- in international waters -- and convert it into a metropolis of floating offices so foreign workers can launch their companies without obtaining work visas.

Despite a number of bills currently in Congress that aim to expand immigrant work visas, "there is no entrepreneurial visa," says co-founder Max Marty. "I think that's a terrible problem."

The answer, according to … Read more

Google Translate for Android is a simple, versatile tool that supports more than 60 languages, offers an SMS translator, and even speaks some of your translations aloud.

The best thing about Google Translate is its simplicity. The app is decked out with a sleek, ICS-flavored Holo theme, complete with Android 4.0's signature action bar and drop-down menu. Altogether, the new skin is a marked improvement over the slightly clunkier interface developed for Android Gingerbread.

To use Google Translate, just select your input and output languages, then type in your text. For even faster results, you can set the … Read more

You've probably heard that immersion is the fastest and most comprehensive way to learn a new language. However, immersion is not an easy task when you don't live in a country where your target language is natively spoken. To help with this issue there's an awesome extension called Language Immersion for Chrome.

With this extension you can add as much or as little of a new language to your everyday Web surfing habits as you like. The extension supports most of the languages offered by Google Translate (roughly 64 of them), and can help you learn the … Read more

Google Translate for Android is a simple, versatile tool that supports more than 50 languages, offers an SMS translator, and speaks some of your translations aloud.

Google Translate is incredibly simple to use. Just select your input and output languages, then type in your text. You can also set the app to automatically detect your input language for even faster results. To quickly interchange your input and output languages, just hit the conveniently placed (center screen) arrow icon. That's it.

It's no secret that Google Translate performs a solid job translating, but what really makes it shine are … Read more

China is stepping up its semiconductor manufacturing efforts and using domestic chips for its latest supercomputer. It's going to be interesting to see how fast China can close in on U.S. supercomputer processor makers Intel, AMD, and Nvidia.

The New York Times reported that a supercomputer called Sunway BlueLight MPP, was installed in September at the National Supercomputer Center in Jinan, China. The details emerged at a technical meeting. The real catch is that China used 8,700 ShenWei SW1600 chips.

Those semiconductors are homegrown and indicate that China is aiming to be a major chip player. The … Read more

Those of you who'd like to read Facebook pages written in a foreign language now have a way to translate posts and comments into your native tongue.

Using the translation tools of Microsoft's Bing, the social-networking site is now offering an inline tool that will translate posts made on public Facebook pages into the language indicated in your profile.

As described by the company, public pages written in a different language will display a "Translate" link next to each post or comment. Clicking on that link converts the post into your own language. Clicking on the &… Read more

Google Translate is a simple, versatile tool that supports more than 50 languages, offers an SMS translator, and speaks some of your translations aloud.

Google Translate is incredibly simple to use. Just select your input and output languages, then type in your text. You can also set the app to automatically detect your input language for even faster results. To quickly interchange your input and output languages, just hit the conveniently placed (center screen) arrow icon. That's it.

It's no secret that Google Translate performs a solid job translating, but what really makes it shine are the extra … Read more